Recover lost iCloud Photo Stream photos

Posted by Alexandra Malureanu,
3rd April 2017

How to recover iOS 11 and iOS 10 iCloud pictures from Photo Stream

This article was updated in August 2017

If you don't already know, your photos stored in My Photo Stream in iCloud aren't part of your iCloud backup. However, iCloud stores the photos that you uploaded to My Photo Stream for 30 days. Photos in My Photo Stream that are older than 30 days are removed. Note that to view a My Photo Stream album, make sure My Photo Stream is turned on in Settings (If you use iCloud Photo Library, the My Photo Stream folder is removed).

*To keep these photos on your device and make them part of your backups, save these photos to your Photo Library, Camera Roll, or another album.

What to do if:

My iPhone was stolen and I remember I had an album called Photo Stream. How can I get those photos back?

Each time you had an Wi-Fi connection your photos were probably synced and added to your Photo Stream. So, up to the moment your device was stolen you can recover your lost photos from your trip and keep those memories alive!

If you sign in back into your iCloud account and enable Photo Stream on another iOS device or computer, you should get these back. However, you shouldn't try to sign into your account in Settings > iCloud on someone else's iPad for example or you risk their data to be merged with yours or being replaced by yours.

Let's guide you how to access your Photo Stream photos without an iPhone or iTunes by using the iPhone Backup Extractor. Note that you will have to have your iCloud credentials at hand.

Sing in to iCloud with the account you have Photo Stream to. Note that only the Premium Edition unlocks all limitations and gives full access to downloading your iCloud backup data, Photo Stream data and encrypted iTunes backup files.

Explore your iCloud backup or download your Photo Stream photos by tapping on the left pane 'Photo Streams' corresponding to the account you just added.

Download and done! Your lost photos have been recovered to a local folder of your choice.

Back up your iPhone data regularly to prevent losing any important information. We take care and recover all your iTunes or iCloud backup data with the help of the iPhone Backup Extractor.

Are videos streamed too? Can I get my lost videos back?

Videos are not included in My Photo Stream data. Camera Roll videos are included in your iCloud backup. To recover them you can chose to restore your iCloud backup but note that it will restore your whole data up to the time the backup was done, or using the iPhone Backup Extractor to recover them locally to your computer. You can opt for recovering only your videos, videos and other data or your entire iCloud backup.

Have you experienced any issues updating to iOS 11 or iOS 10? Have you lost data that you couldn't recover?
We'd love to hear from you in the comments below.

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